Timeline of Shawn Moore killer's crimes

Ronald Lloyd Bailey was fingerprinted in September 1985 when he was arrested in Marion County, Florida, on a Michigan warrant alleging he kidnapped and murdered 13-year-old Shawn Moore, of Green Oak Township.(Photo: Courtesy of Michigan State Police)

Ronald Lloyd Bailey testified in 1986 that he had "impulses" that caused him to kidnap 13-year-old Shawn Moore, of Green Oak Township.

However, on cross-examination, the prosecution skillfully showed that the then-27-year-old Bailey had a long history of kidnapping and sexually assaulting teenage boys.

The following is a time line of Bailey's history and the Shawn Moore investigation:

1972: Bailey was admitted to Hawthorne Center, a psychiatric hospital, at age 13 for kidnapping a boy off his bicycle on Five Mile Road in Farmington and fondling him in the woods behind a school. However, trial testimony indicated that Bailey's first "homosexual relationship" occurred in third grade with another third-grader.

1973: Bailey abducted a 15-year-old boy, put a knife to his neck and assaulted him in a bus yard.

June 12, 1974: Bailey abducted a 12-year-old at knife point from his bicycle and tried to choke him.

1976: Bailey was 16 when he abducted a boy from the Westland Mall. He sexually assaulted the 12-year-old boy and choked him before leaving him alone in the woods. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to the Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital. Bailey said he did this because an "impulse jumped into my head, and I went out and kidnapped a boy. It was just an urge to do it, to take him, have him. I don't know if it was sex or what."

June 1984: A 15-year-old Redford Township boy is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Bailey is eventually charged in this incident.

Aug. 31, 1985: Shawn Moore is abducted at around 3:45 p.m. as he returned home from purchasing a soda at a nearby convenience store on Whitmore Lake Road, between Lee and Maltby roads in Green Oak Township. Witnesses reported the 13-year-old boy had been yanked off his bicycle by a white male in his mid-20s and dragged into a late-model Jeep.

Pictured is Ronald Lloyd Bailey’s Jeep Renegade that he used when he kidnapped 13-year-old Shawn Moore as he rode his bicycle home from a store near his Green Oak Township home Aug. 31, 1985.(Photo: Courtesy of Michigan State Police)

Sept. 1, 1985: A witness reports that the man who took Shawn was driving a Jeep, not a pickup as originally reported.

Sept. 2, 1985: Michigan State Police release a composite sketch of the person seen kidnapping Shawn and a photograph of a Jeep similar to the one the suspect is believed to be driving.

Sept. 3, 1985: Police establish a command post in Brighton at a warehouse and a reward fund is started. At the end of the case, an estimated $60,000 in reward money had been distributed, retired Judge Frank Del Vero, who prosecuted the case, said.

Sept. 6, 1985: Bailey's name appears on a list of Jeep owners. Police interview him and he claims he was fishing in the Thumb area of Caseville. His criminal history, however, is not immediately discovered.

Sept. 10, 1985: A second tip from a Livonia police officer reveals Bailey's criminal history. He is questioned by police but witnesses fail to pick him out of a line-up and he is released.

Sept. 11, 1985: Bailey boards an airplane for Orlando, Florida. A FBI agent is also on board as part of a "limited surveillance" effort.

Investigators walked this trail in September 1985 and found the nude, decomposed body of Shawn Moore, a 13-year-old Green Oak Township boy who had been kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered.(Photo: Courtesy of Michigan State Police)

Sept. 13, 1985: Shawn Moore's nude body was found at 10:30 a.m. amid the pine and fern of a state forest, about 2.5 miles east of a cabin belonging to a friend of Bailey's in Gladwin County in central Michigan. At 12:45 p.m., a warrant is issued for Bailey, and when police go to pick him up, they discover he has fled from the Belleview, Florida, trailer they were watching.

Sept. 14, 1985: Bailey walks out of a swamp and is arrested in Florida's Marion County after a search by an estimated 200 federal and state authorities.

Sept. 15, 1985: Bailey is extradited to Howell and lodged in the Livingston County Jail.

Sept. 16, 1985: Bailey is arraigned in the county jail library instead of the courtroom due to concerns about his safety due to alleged threats against his life. He is charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder.

Sept. 17, 1985: Shawn's friends and family gathered at the Holy Spirit Catholic Church for his funeral. He was laid to rest in Saint Patrick Calvary Cemetery in Brighton. His father, Bud Moore, died in September 2011 and his mother, Sharon Moore, the following November.

Oct. 22, 1985: Bailey is found competent to stand trial, according to a report from the Regional Forensic Center near Ypsilanti.

Sept. 3, 1986: Jury selection starts in Livingston County Circuit Court with Judge Stanley J. Latreille presiding. It took three days to seat the initial 14 prospective jurors.

Judge Frank Del Vero, left, and former Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse talk about the logistics of the Shawn Moore case in 1985, held in the historic Livingston County Courthouse. Del Vero was the prosecuting attorney, and Moore was chief assistant prosecuting attorney at the time.(Photo: Gillis Benedict/Livingston Daily)

Sept. 10, 1986: A 14-member jury is seated after five days of jury selection. The jurors were nine men, five women, including a construction company president, a computer technician and a 70-year-old part-time Avon saleswoman. In all, 66 potential jurors were questioned out of a pool of 300.

Sept. 11, 1986: Testimony begins in the Livingston County case against Bailey.

Sept. 22, 1986: Bailey testified that impulses he could not describe and whose origin were unknown to him made him kidnap a boy when he was 13.

Shawn Moore’s bicycle is seen lying alongside Whitmore Lake Road in Green Oak Township while a police officer talks with two people in the background. Witnesses said they saw a white male force 13-year-old Shawn into a Jeep on Aug. 31, 1985.(Photo: Livingston County Sheriff’s Department)

Sept. 23, 1986: Bailey testifies that he strangled Shawn because "I thought he was me."

Sept. 25, 1986: Bailey admits three times on cross-examination that he knew killing Shawn was wrong. Bailey claims he was driven insane by the sexual demands of his former psychiatrist at Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Jose Tombo, who denied the allegations. He admits putting elastic or belt around his victims' necks and tightening it to enhance the sexual experience.

Sept. 30, 1986: The jury, comprised of seven men and five women, begins deliberations. In all, they deliberated nine hours over two days.

Oct. 1, 1986: Verdict: Guilty of kidnapping and first-degree premeditated murder. Bailey sat impassively as the verdict was read at 2:10 p.m., but wept later in his cell, his attorneys said. Jurors said they did not believe the insanity defense.

Oct. 30, 1986: Bailey is sentenced to life for first-degree murder and 65-100 years for kidnapping Shawn.

November 1986: A bench trial is held in Wayne County, where Bailey is charged with the murder of 14-year-old Kenny Myers, of Redford. Kenny's body was found in a wooded area along the banks of the Rouge River.

Dec. 4, 1986: Bailey is sentenced to 60-90 years in prison for the kidnapping and murder of Kenny.

Aug. 31, 2015: Bailey is housed at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia. The facility is surrounded by fences with razor ribbon and patrolled by armed staff and monitored by gun towers.

The following is a time line of Ronald Lloyd Bailey's history and the Shawn Moore investigation.

1972

1974

1976

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

6/30/1972

Shawn Moore

Shawn was born June 30, 1972, to Bruce "Bud" Moore and Sharon Eister Moore.

His classmates remember him as a boy who loved animals, loved drawing and always had a smile.

"He got along with everyone," classmate Eric Alli said.

(Photo: Shawn Moore)

1972

Photo from MDOC

Hawthorn Center

Ronald Lloyd Bailey was admitted to Hawthorne Center, a psychiatric hospital, at age 13 for kidnapping an 8-year-old boy off his bicycle on Five Mile Road in Farmington and fondling him in the woods behind a school.

On Sept. 27, 1973, he abducted a 15-year-old boy, put a knife to his neck and assaulted him in a bus yard. At his trial, Bailey said he "may have said I have a knife, but I don't know if I put a knife to his neck." The boy identified Bailey through a Livonia school book photograph and he was subsequently sentenced to the Hawthorn Center.

According the Michigan Department of Corrections' website, Hawthorn Center opened in 1956 and provides "intensive inpatient psychiatric services to children and adolescents."

(Photo from MDOC website)

1976

Northville hospital

Ronald Bailey was 16 when he abducted a boy from the Westland Mall. He sexually assaulted the 12-year-old boy and choked him before leaving him alone in the woods. Bailey subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital where he met Dr. Jose Tombo, who played a key role in the defense although the man never testified.

The defense during Bailey's trial for the murder of Shawn Moore (pictured) maintained that Tombo contributed to Bailey's insanity because the psychologist had forced sexual relations with Bailey while he was at the Northville hospital.

Bailey was released after three years when doctors said he was ready to rejoin society.

7/16/1984

Kenny Myers

Ronald Bailey kidnapped 14-year-old Kenny Myers (pictured) from a parking lot near his Ferndale home. His body was found two days later in Hines Park.

Bailey was not connected with or formally charged with this crime until the Shawn Moore investigation. He eventually was convicted and in December 1986 he was sentenced to life in prison for Kenny's murder.

Bailey told the court that he killed Kenny so "I'd be the last person he'd ever have sex with. I didn't want him to have normal sex with anyone else. He was so good looking. I was a little sexually excited because I knew he was dead," according to Tom Henderson's book, "Blood Justice." Bailey also claimed he cried because his friend was dead.

8/31/1985

Shawn Moore kidnapped

Shawn Moore is abducted around 3:45 p.m. as he returned home from purchasing and drinking an A&W root beer from the Pump & Pantry, less than 2 miles from his family's home in Horizon Hills subdivision in Green Oak Township.

Witnesses reported the 13-year-old boy had been yanked off his bicycle by a white male in his mid-20s and dragged into a pickup.

(Photo: Shawn Moore's bicycle lies where it fell on Whitmore Lake Road when he was yanked off it. In the background, an officer speaks with two individuals. Courtesy of Livingston County Sheriff's Department.)

9/2/1985

Identifying the Jeep

An Eastern Michigan University student who heard a news report about the kidnapping told police that she was traveling north on U.S. 23 when she saw a man in a Jeep Renegade, not a pickup as initially reported by another witness.

She later pointed out the vehicle type at a local dealership.

(Photo: The Jeep Renegade that Ronald Bailey used to kidnap Shawn Moore. Courtesy of Michigan State Police)

9/10/1985

Tips

On Sept. 10, 1985, the task force investigating the kidnapping of Shawn Moore learned from a Livonia police officer that he had investigated Ronald Bailey about 10 years early. Police now learn about Bailey kidnapping a boy off a bicycle and molesting him.

Bailey is questioned by police, but witnesses fail to pick him out of a lineup. The next day, Bailey boards an airplane for Florida and following him are FBI agents as part of a "limited surveillance" effort.

(Photo shows one of between 1,600 and 2,000 tips police received in the case. Courtesy of former Green Oak officer Dave Ostrem)

9/13/1985

Shawn is found

Shawn Moore's nude body was found at 10:30 a.m. amid the pine and fern of a state forest, about 2.5 miles east of a cabin belonging to a friend of Bailey's in Gladwin County in Central Michigan.

At 12:45 p.m., a warrant is issued for Bailey, and when police go to pick him up, they discover he has fled from the Belleview, Florida, trailer they were watching.

(Photo: The body of Shawn Moore was found in an area near this large tree. Courtesy of Michigan State Police)

9/14/1985

Bailey arrested

Ronald Bailey managed to slip away from officers when the friends he was staying with in Florida heard on a police scanner that police were looking for him.

An estimated 200 state and federal officers searched him, eventually finding him in a swamp area. Bailey walked out of the swamp and was arrested in Florida's Marion County. He was returned to Livingston County, Michigan, where he was booked into the Livingston County Jail on a warrant for the kidnapping and murder of Shawn Moore.

Bailey was arraigned on Sept. 16, 1985.

(Photo: Ronald Bailey's booking photo and fingerprints from his arrest in Marion County, Florida. Courtesy of Michigan State Police.)

9/17/1985

Laid to rest

Shawn Moore's friends and family gathered at the Holy Spirit Catholic Church for his funeral. He was laid to rest in Saint Patrick Calvary Cemetery in Brighton.

Shawn is buried next to his parents, Bud Moore, who died in September 2011, and Sharon Moore, who died the following November.

Ronald Bailey's murder trial started with jury selection on Sept. 3, 1986. It ended Oct. 1, 1986 when the verdict was read: Guilty of kidnapping and first-degree premeditated murder. Bailey was sentenced on Oct. 30 that year to life in prison for murder and 65-100 years for kidnapping.

Bailey testified that he knew killing Shawn was wrong and he claimed he was driven insane by the sexual demands of his former psychiatrist at Northville hospital. The doctor denied the allegations and was never charged.